Study of Suitability of Hybrid Architectures for Different Market Requirements

With increasing environmental awareness and higher fuel prices, Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEVs) are receiving a lot of attention and gaining increased market acceptance. Until recently, technologies needed were not fully mature to make HEVs both viable and affordable. Customer usage varies significantly in terms of speed, acceleration and grades. In order to understand how to exploit the benefits of hybrids, these driving variations must be understood. Through analysis it is shown that each of the hybrid configurations has merits for a particular driving pattern and hence the usage pattern must be taken into account before determining the most suitable hybrid configuration for a customer segment / geographic region.